Awakenings
by AllHailTheGeek
Summary: A series of drabbles set post-Endor, pertaining to The Movie being rampantly spoiled by just about everybody. If you don't want even more spoilers, DO NOT READ. (What else is new, right?)
1. Trench Run Disease

**A/N: To quote Barriss from Trials, "OhmyForce. Oh. My. Force."**

 **I went to Force Awakens a couple nights ago, and it is AMAZING. Seriously amazing. I heard it described by a friend as being "like the way we remember the Original Trilogy," which is very apt if I do say so myself. If you haven't seen it yet, drop this story and go see it, because a) awesomeness and b) lots of spoilers in this thing.**

 **Disclaimer: I still don't own Star Wars, but now I wish I did more than ever.**

Poe Dameron is a master pilot. The jinks and jukes, the one-in-a-million shots, the whirlwind feats of split-second skill come as second nature to him. He therefore has some small amount of brainpower left with which to make fun of the First Order.

 _How stupid can these guys be?!_ he chuckles to himself, avoiding yet another searing green streak mere milliseconds before he blasts its originator to smithereens. _They're so stuck up with this huger-than-the-Death-Star planet killer thingy, when they don't even realize it still has Trench Run Disease!_


	2. What She Already Knows

They forget she has the Force sometimes.

Since Luke left, vanished gods-knew-where, they forget she was his sister. Twin sister, no less. The Force is strong in her family; why, then, should it not be strong in her?

She has some small amount of training, gleaned in bits and pieces from her brother and son. She knows enough to be dead accurate with a blaster, to sense another nearby Force user, to fight with a lightsaber if she truly has to.

When they inform her, with somber mien, of her old husband's death, they are telling her what she already knows.


	3. Garbage

She guesses she's what Core Worlders would call a "quick study." As she steals pieces from the old crash sites, she learns where they go, what they do, how they connect to the larger whole. As she cleans them, she commits the minutiae of their design to memory.

When the YT-model freighter is swindled by the Blobfish off some passing thug, she knows somehow that it is _special._ Perhaps it's her extensive technological experience, perhaps some other, stranger intuition, but she recognizes the innumerable modifications as the work of someone with few resources but an excess of skill. Like herself.

The "garbage" lifts her heart, but it does not lift the rest of her until a decade later.


	4. Carry On

He cannot say whose grief is worse: his or Leia's. At night, when Rey is fast asleep, he howls silently into his hammock. Silent, the way Leia was silent when she heard the news. Silent, but crying out inside.

He owed a life debt to the cub, who had been his brother in all but blood. By right it ought to have been him out there, taking the lightsaber to his own heart. It would be so easy to hate Kylo, hate the one who stole his sacred duty from him...But he remembers Luke. He remembers the quest, he remembers those still living, who need him in the here and now.

He sleeps, at something like to peace.


	5. Eyes

She sees eyes like theirs all the time. Solo's are jaded, gray-green-gold duller and more cynical than they were when she first met him, mere weeks after Yavin. (He believes in the Force now, though, which is a start.) Chewie's are classic Wookiee, all strength and compassion and lovably short temper. The dark-skinned one, not quite a coward but coming alarmingly close, obviously just wants to get away.

The girl, though...she is an anomaly. A paradox. Maz cannot see behind her eyes- her innate shields are astounding. Almost on par with...could it be...?

Will she go for the saber?


	6. Silence, Broken

Oh, Force. Not here. Not now. Not so soon after Han. He sensed it, of course, when everything was set into motion - it sometimes seems that all he does is meditate, nowadays - but he hadn't imagined they would find him this _quickly._ He'd thought he was done with conflict, that maybe he'd be left alone to live out the remainder of his foolish days where he couldn't fail anyone else, but this is clearly not to be. Pity, that. He is no savior. Never was.

 _That's not true and you know it,_ says a little voice inside him.

Whether it belongs to Anakin or the girl holding Anakin's saber, he can't begin to tell.


	7. Existential Crisis

He isn't so sure now that, when he left, he was thinking entirely straight. But then again, that was the shatterpoint of his entire life thus far: good or evil, all or nothing, do or die. You have to cut him a little slack.

You have to, because the universe certainly hasn't. The villagers are dead despite his insubordination, Poe is dead despite his _help,_ and now he's stuck on some junk heap of a freighter with three beings who think he's with the Resistance!

Well, _is_ he with the Resistance? What determines a sentient's loyalty? Will it really matter, in the final reckoning that is sure to come someday?


	8. Make It Right

"Escape now, hug later!"

He hates to break up the reunion, really he does, but they have to get moving! They have to place the charges, somehow avoid all the multitudinous bucketheads, and get the nine hells out of here before pressing the detonator button and letting said hells break loose!

Then he spots him, just standing there on the bridge over oblivion, and that familiar old ache rips his chest apart again.

He promised Leia. He promised. Kriff bombs and troopers and everything else. He has to _make this right._

He takes a deep breath.

 _"Ben!"_


	9. Special Programming

He misses them all out there - Master Luke, Master Han, Mistress Leia, yes, even Threepio - but his loyalty is to Luke most of all, and it was Luke who gave him this Special Programming...so. Here he stays. Low power. No servos, no external lights, only the barest hint of life within his deepest wiring, the wiring Threepio always said was crossed.

Well, so what if it is? He doesn't care. Never has. The Programming said to wait for _when the time is right-_ and so he shall, but he is not above hoping that time will come _soon._

He misses them all, you know.


	10. How

His first question, after the battle that leaves him all but helpless, is _how._

 _How_ did this girl, this unknown scavenger who he'd first thought was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, manage to win a lightsaber duel against him? _How_ did she resist his brutal probe, break her bonds, mind-trick his stormtroopers at least twice, and call the Skywalker saber to herself in that final fight when _he_ was the descendant of Skywalker, all while _completely untrained?!_

Then he remembers an old Jedi adage: "There is no such thing as a coincidence."

His question changes from _how_ to _why._


End file.
